Jones, M. (2012 forthcoming) Attwood, F., Campbell, V., Hunter, I.Q, Lockyer, S. Controversial Images, Palgrave, London Media-Bodies and Photoshop Meredith Jones Far from being defanged in the modern era, images are one of the last bastions of magical thinking (Mitchell, 2005:128). …any understanding of contemporary visual mediation that ignores software does so at its own peril, in an age when cinema has become synonymous with Final Cut Pro, photography with Photoshop, writing with Microsoft Word, and on and on (Galloway, 2006:321). Introduction We have always adjusted photographs to suit different temporal and spatial moments: their borders morph as we snip or rip to remove unsavoury elements—the ex- husband, the child who became a criminal, the awful handbag. Photographic imagery is made from what lurks outside the frame as much as by what is contained within it. And yet, photography’s own mythology tells a different story: that something complete has been captured. Even as we know that outside every image hover ignored or invisibilised ‘truths’ we still hold onto a cultural belief that photography offers a direct link to the real. Photoshop and other image-manipulating software programs magnify tensions around photography’s connection to the factual. For in Photoshop what is in the frame, from the start, is adjusted and manipulated. As soon as an image has been touched by a Photoshop tool it is augmented, reduced, enhanced or changed in some way. And increasingly, all of our important global images are photoshopped: we now expect that adjustment has happened, even as we continue to demand that photographs represent the real. This chapter explores this tension via three controversial photoshopped images of women’s bodies: the nude picture of Simone de Beauvoir on the cover of Nouvel Observateur (January 2008), the Ralph Lauren campaign featuring heavily Photoshopped images of model Filippa Hamilton-Palmstierna (October 2009) and the Dove Evolution video (2006). The de Beauvoir image was thought by many to have been used inappropriately given the philosopher’s eminent place in intellectual history. That it had been photoshopped was less controversial at the time, but is the focus here. The Hamilton-Palmstierna image was controversial because it had been so heavily photoshopped it hardly resembled a real body anymore. The Dove video made a provocative and somewhat political statement about the use of Photoshop in beauty and fashion media, explicitly linking this to women’s and girls’ poor body image. I preface the arguments presented here with a clear statement that all vision is media- laden. By this I mean that seeing is always mediated, whether we are considering the particular capabilities and limitations of the human eye, the frame and physical protection provided by the plate glass window, or the views provided by the ubiquitous big and little screens that populate the contemporary world. In turn, every